"For the first time, scientists have created a flexible programmable chip that is not made of silicon..." reports IEEE Spectrum — opening new possibilities for implantable devices, on-skin computers, brain-machine interfaces, and soft robotics. U.K.-based Pragmatic Semiconductor produced an "ultralow-power" 32-bit microprocessor, according to the article, and "The microchip's open-source RISC-V architecture suggests it might cost less than a dollar..." This shows potential for inexpensive applications like wearable healthcare electronics and smart package labels, according to the chip's inventors: For example, "we can develop an ECG patch that has flexible electrodes attached to the chest and a flexible microprocessor connected to flexible electrodes to classify arrhythmia conditions by processing the ECG data from a patient," says Emre Ozer, senior director of processor development at Pragmatic, a flexible chip manufacturer in Cambridge, England. Detecting normal heart rhythms versus an arrhythmia "is a machine learning task that can run in software in the flexible microprocessor," he says... Pragmatic sought to create a flexible microchip that cost significantly less to make than a silicon processor. The new device, named Flex-RV, is a 32-bit microprocessor based on the metal-oxide semiconductor indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO). Attempts to create flexible devices from silicon require special packaging for the brittle microchips to protect them from the mechanical stresses of bending and stretching. In contrast, pliable thin-film transistors made from IGZO can be made directly at low temperatures onto flexible plastics, leading to lower costs... "Our end goal is to democratize computing by developing a license-free microprocessor," Ozer says... Other processors have been built using flexible semiconductors, such as Pragmatic's 32-bit PlasticARM and an ultracheap microcontroller designed by engineers in Illinois. Unlike these earlier devices, Flex-RV is programmable and can run compiled programs written in high-level languages such as C. In addition, the open-source nature of RISC-V also let the researchers equip Flex-RV with a programmable machine learning hardware accelerator, enabling artificial intelligence applications. Each Flex-RV microprocessor has a 17.5 square millimeter core and roughly 12,600 logic gates. The research team found Flex-RV could run as fast as 60 kilohertz while consuming less than 6 milliwatts of power... The Pragmatic team found that Flex-RV could still execute programs correctly when bent to a curve with a radius of 3 millimeters. Performance varied between a 4.3 percent slowdown to a 2.3 percent speedup depending on the way it was bent.

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"SpaceX has temporarily grounded its Falcon 9 rocket," reports Space.com, "after the vehicle experienced an issue on the Crew-9 astronaut launch for NASA." Crew-9 lifted off on Saturday (Sept. 28) from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, sending NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov aloft aboard the Crew Dragon capsule "Freedom" [for a 5-month stay, returning in February with Starliner's two astronauts]. Everything appeared to go well. The Falcon 9's first stage aced its landing shortly after liftoff, and the rocket's upper stage deployed Freedom into its proper orbit; the capsule is on track to arrive at the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday afternoon (Sept. 29) as planned. But the upper stage experienced an issue after completing that job, SpaceX announced early Sunday morning. "After today's successful launch of Crew-9, Falcon 9's second stage was disposed in the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn. As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area. We will resume launching after we better understand root cause," SpaceX wrote in a post on X. Indeed, a Falcon 9 had been scheduled to launch 20 broadband satellites for the company Eutelsat OneWeb from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Sunday night, but that liftoff has been postponed.

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Long-time Slashdot reader AsylumWraith writes: Visual Capitalist has posted an article and graph showing that, on average, 67% of US tech workers would be interested in joining a union. The percentage is highest at companies like Intuit, with 94% or respondents indicating they'd be interested in joining a union. On the other end of the scale, fewer than half of the employees at Apple, Tesla, and Google, who were surveyed were interested in such a move.

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An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: Look at the top right corner of your phone. You might see an icon with "5G" and another with vertical bars showing the strength of your internet connection. Those symbols don't mean what you think they do. If your phone shows "5G," you're not necessarily connected to the latest and zippiest cellphone network technology. It might just mean that 5G connections are available nearby. And the bars are a cellular version of a shrug. There is no standard measure of how much signal strength each bar represents. "The connection icon is a lie," said Avi Greengart, president of the technology analysis firm Techsponential... The good news is you might not need 5G, anyway. Most of the time, your phone calls, texting and web surfing are perfectly fine on the prior generation of wireless technology called 4G or sometimes "LTE." Many phone networks will funnel you over 5G service when it makes a real difference, like if you're on a video call or playing an intense video game. If you see more specific types of 5G icons, like "5G UW" used by Verizon or "5G UC" if you're on T-Mobile service, Hyers said you're probably connected to a 5G network at that moment. Those extra letters or symbols sometimes indicate types of 5G technology that are capable of faster and more reliable connections, but they aren't always better, depending on your circumstances. Confusingly, AT&T has showed "5G E" icons on phones. That is not 5G service at all. Here's how major carriers responded to the Post's reporter: "AT&T said its '5G' indicators on phones line up with a telecommunications standards organization that established the icon to mean 5G networks are available." "Verizon didn't respond to my questions." "T-Mobile said for most of its cellphone network, your phone accurately reflects if you're on 5G." The article suggests setting your phone to just automatically switch to 5G networks when high-bandwidth applications are in use...

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Thursday America's Food and Drug Administration approved Cobenfy, "the first new drug to treat people with schizophrenia in more than 30 years," reports ABC News: Most schizophrenia medications, broadly known as antipsychotics, work by changing dopamine levels, a brain chemical that affects mood, motivation, and thinking [according to Jelena Kunovac, MD, a board-certified psychiatrist and adjunct assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in the Department of Psychiatry]. Cobenfy takes a different approach by adjusting acetylcholine, another brain chemical that aids memory, learning and attention, she said. By focusing on acetylcholine instead of dopamine, Cobenfy may reduce schizophrenia symptoms while avoiding common side effects like weight gain, drowsiness and movement disorders, clinical trials suggest. These side effects often become so severe and unpleasant that, in some studies mirroring real-world challenges, many patients stopped treatment within 18 months of starting it. In clinical trials, only 6% of patients stopped taking Cobenfy due to side effects, noted Dr. Samit Hirawat, chief medical officer at Bristol Myers Squibb. "That's a significant improvement over the 20-30% seen with older antipsychotic drugs," he added... Schizophrenia is a mental health disorder that affects about 24 million people worldwide, or roughly one in 300 people, according to the World Health Organization. "Studies for additional therapeutic uses, including the treatment of Alzheimer's disease and bipolar disorder, are also underway."

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J. Doyne Farmer is the director of the complexity economics program at the Institute for New Economic Thinking in Oxford's research and policy unit. And he reminds us that solar and wind energy "are very likely to get even less expensive and grow quickly," pointing out that "the rate at which a given kind of technology improves is remarkably predictable." The best-known example is Moore's Law... Like computer chips, many other technologies also get exponentially more affordable, though at different rates. Some of the best examples are renewable energy technologies such as solar panels, lithium batteries and wind turbines. The cost of solar panels has dropped an average of 10% a year, making them about 10,000 times cheaper than they were in 1958, the year of their pioneering use to power the Vanguard 1 satellite. Lithium batteries have cheapened at a comparable pace, and the cost of wind turbines has dropped steadily too, albeit at a slower rate. Not all technologies follow this course, however. Fossil fuels cost roughly what they did a century ago, adjusted for inflation, and nuclear power is no cheaper than it was in 1958. (In fact, partly due to heightened safety concerns, it's somewhat more expensive.) The global deployment of technologies follows another pattern, called an S curve, increasing exponentially at first and then leveling out. Careful analysis of the spread of many technologies, from canals to the internet, makes it possible to predict the pace of technological adoption. When a technology is new, predictions are difficult, but as it develops, they get easier. Applying these ideas to the energy transition indicates that key technologies such as solar, wind, batteries and green-hydrogen-based fuels are likely to grow rapidly, dominating the energy system within the next two decades. And they will continue to get cheaper and cheaper, making energy far more affordable than it has ever been. This will happen in electricity generation first and then in sectors that are harder to decarbonize, including aviation and long-range shipping. And in addition, "The future savings more than offset present investments to the extent that the transition would make sense from a purely economic standpoint even if we weren't worried about climate change. "The sooner we make investments and adopt policies that enable the transition, the sooner we will realize the long-term savings."

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Uplevel provides insights from coding and collaboration data, according to a recent report from CIO magazine — and recently they measured "the time to merge code into a repository [and] the number of pull requests merged" for about 800 developers over a three-month period (comparing the statistics to the previous three months). Their study "found no significant improvements for developers" using Microsoft's AI-powered coding assistant tool Copilot, according to the article (shared by Slashdot reader snydeq): Use of GitHub Copilot also introduced 41% more bugs, according to the study... In addition to measuring productivity, the Uplevel study looked at factors in developer burnout, and it found that GitHub Copilot hasn't helped there, either. The amount of working time spent outside of standard hours decreased for both the control group and the test group using the coding tool, but it decreased more when the developers weren't using Copilot. An Uplevel product manager/data analyst acknowledged to the magazine that there may be other ways to measure developer productivity — but they still consider their metrics solid. "We heard that people are ending up being more reviewers for this code than in the past... You just have to keep a close eye on what is being generated; does it do the thing that you're expecting it to do?" The article also quotes the CEO of software development firm Gehtsoft, who says they didn't see major productivity gains from LLM-based coding assistants — but did see them introducing errors into code. With different prompts generating different code sections, "It becomes increasingly more challenging to understand and debug the AI-generated code, and troubleshooting becomes so resource-intensive that it is easier to rewrite the code from scratch than fix it." On the other hand, cloud services provider Innovative Solutions saw significant productivity gains from coding assistants like Claude Dev and GitHub Copilot. And Slashdot reader destined2fail1990 says that while large/complex code bases may not see big gains, "I have seen a notable increase in productivity from using Cursor, the AI powered IDE." Yes, you have to review all the code that it generates, why wouldn't you? But often times it just works. It removes the tedious tasks like querying databases, writing model code, writing forms and processing forms, and a lot more. Some forms can have hundreds of fields and processing those fields along with doing checks for valid input is time consuming, but can be automated effectively using AI. This prompted an interesting discussion on the original story submission. Slashdot reader bleedingobvious responded: Cursor/Claude are great BUT the code produced is almost never great quality. Even given these tools, the junior/intern teams still cannot outpace the senior devs. Great for learning, maybe, but the productivity angle not quite there.... yet. It's damned close, though. GIve it 3-6 months. And Slashdot reader abEeyore posted: I suspect that the results are quite a bit more nuanced than that. I expect that it is, even outside of the mentioned code review, a shift in where and how the time is spent, and not necessarily in how much time is spent. Agree? Disagree? Share your own experiences in the comments. And are developers really saving time with AI coding assistants?

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California governor Gavin Newsom "vetoed a bill Saturday that would have required new cars to beep at drivers if they exceed the speed limit," reports the Associated Press: In explaining his veto, Newsom said federal law already dictates vehicle safety standards and adding California-specific requirements would create a patchwork of regulations. The National Highway Traffic Safety "is also actively evaluating intelligent speed assistance systems, and imposing state-level mandates at this time risks disrupting these ongoing federal assessments," the Democratic governor said... The legislation would have likely impacted all new car sales in the U.S., since the California market is so large that car manufacturers would likely just make all of their vehicles comply... Starting in July, the European Union will require all new cars to have the technology, although drivers would be able to turn it off. At least 18 manufacturers including Ford, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Nissan, have already offered some form of speed limiters on some models sold in America, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. Thanks to Slashdot reader Gruntbeetle for sharing the news.

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Bryan Choi, an associate professor of law and computer science focusing on software safety, proposes shifting AI liability onto the builders of the systems: To date, most popular approaches to AI safety and accountability have focused on the technological characteristics and risks of AI systems, while averting attention from the workers behind the curtain responsible for designing, implementing, testing, and maintaining such systems... I have previously argued that a negligence-based approach is needed because it directs legal scrutiny on the actual persons responsible for creating and managing AI systems. A step in that direction is found in California's AI safety bill, which specifies that AI developers shall articulate and implement protocols that embody the "developer's duty to take reasonable care to avoid producing a covered model or covered model derivative that poses an unreasonable risk of causing or materially enabling a critical harm" (emphasis added). Although tech leaders have opposed California's bill, courts don't need to wait for legislation to allow negligence claims against AI developers. But how would negligence work in the AI context, and what downstream effects should AI developers anticipate? The article suggest two possibilities. Classifying AI developers as ordinary employees leaves employers then sharing liability for negligent acts (giving them "strong incentives to obtain liability insurance policies and to defend their employees against legal claims.") But AI developers could also be treated as practicing professionals (like physicians and attorneys). "{In this regime, each AI professional would likely need to obtain their own individual or group malpractice insurance policies." AI is a field that perhaps uniquely seeks to obscure its human elements in order to magnify its technical wizardry. The virtue of the negligence-based approach is that it centers legal scrutiny back on the conduct of the people who build and hype the technology. To be sure, negligence is limited in key ways and should not be viewed as a complete answer to AI governance. But fault should be the default and the starting point from which all conversations about AI accountability and AI safety begin. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader david.emery for sharing the article.

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America's National Transportation Safety Board "is issuing 'urgent safety recommendations' for some Boeing 737s..." reports CNN, "warning that critical flight controls could jam." The independent investigative agency is issuing the warning that an actuator attached to the rudder on some 737 NG and 737 MAX airplanes could fail... "Boeing's 737 flight manual instructs pilots confronted with a jammed or restricted rudder to 'overpower the jammed or restricted system (using) maximum force, including a combined effort of both pilots,'" the NTSB said in a news release. "The NTSB expressed concern that this amount of force applied during landing or rollout could result in a large input to the rudder pedals and a sudden, large, and undesired rudder deflection that could unintentionally cause loss of control or departure from a runway," the statement said. "The FAA said United was the only U.S. airline flying planes with the manufacturing defect in the rudder control system," notes the Seattle Times, "and that United has already replaced the component on nine 737s, the only jets in its fleet where it was identified as faulty. However, the NTSB alert may cause the grounding of some 737 MAXs and older model 737NGs flown by foreign air carriers that have not yet replaced the defective part."

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Last weekend Boeing announced that its CEO of Defense, Space, and Security "had left the company," according to Barrons. "Parting ways like this, for upper management, is the equivalent to firing," they write — though they add that setbacks on Starliner's first crewed test flight is "far too simple an explanation." Starliner might, however, have been the straw that broke the camel's back. [New CEO Kelly] Ortberg took over in early August, so his first material interaction with the Boeing Defense and Space business was the spaceship's failed test flight... Starliner has cost Boeing $1.6 billion and counting. That's lot of money, but not all that much in the context of the Defense business, which generates sales of roughly $25 billion a year.... [T]he overall Defense business has performed poorly of late, burdened by fixed price contracts that have become unprofitable amid years of higher than expected inflation. Profitability in the defense business has been declining since 2020 and started losing money in 2022. From 2022 to 2024 losses should total about $6 billion cumulatively, including Wall Street's estimates for the second half of this year. Still, it felt like something had to give. And the change shows investors something about new CEO Ortberg. "At this critical juncture, our priority is to restore the trust of our customers and meet the high standards they expect of us," read part of an internal email sent to Boeing employees announcing the change. "Why his predecessor — David Calhoun — didn't pull this trigger earlier this year is a mystery," wrote Gordon Haskett analyst Don Bilson in a Monday note. "Can't leave astronauts behind." "Ortberg's logic appears sound," the article concludes. "In recent years, Boeing has disappointed its airline and defense customers, including NASA... "After Starliner, defense profitability, and the strike, Ortberg has to tackle production quality, production rates, and Boeing's ailing balance sheet. Boeing has amassed almost $60 billion in debt since the second tragic 737 MAX crash in March 2019." Thanks to Slashdot reader Press2ToContinue for sharing the news.

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Long-time Slashdot reader dmitrygr writes: Debian Linux booted on a 4-bit intel microprocessor from 1971 — the first microprocessor in the world — the 4004. It is not fast, but it is a real Linux kernel with a Debian rootfs on a real board whose only CPU is a real intel 4004 from the 1970s. There's a detailed blog post about the experiment. (Its title? "Slowly booting full Linux on the intel 4004 for fun, art, and absolutely no profit.") In the post dmitrygr describes testing speed optimizations with an emulator where "my initial goal was to get the boot time under a week..."

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"After complaining that Gen Z grads are difficult to work with for the best part of two years, bosses are no longer all talk, no action — now they're rapidly firing young workers who aren't up to scratch just months after hiring them," writes Fortune. "According to a new report, six in 10 employers say they have already sacked some of the Gen Z workers they hired fresh out of college earlier this year." Intelligent.com, a platform dedicated to helping young professionals navigate the future of work, surveyed nearly 1,000 U.S. leaders... After experiencing a raft of problems with young new hires, one in six bosses say they're hesitant to hire college grads again. Meanwhile, one in seven bosses have admitted that they may avoid hiring them altogether next year. Three-quarters of the companies surveyed said some or all of their recent graduate hires were unsatisfactory in some way... Employers' gripe with young people today is their lack of motivation or initiative — 50% of the leaders surveyed cited that as the reason why things didn't work out with their new hire. Bosses also pointed to Gen Z being unprofessional, unorganized and having poor communication skills as their top reasons for having to sack grads. Leaders say they have struggled with the latest generation's tangible challenges, including being late to work and meetings often, not wearing office-appropriate clothing, and using language appropriate for the workspace. Now, more than half of hiring managers have come to the conclusion that college grads are unprepared for the world of work. Meanwhile, over 20% say they can't handle the workload. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader smooth wombat for sharing the article.

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Past studies have suggested a major ocean current could collapse, quickly changing temperatures and climate patterns, reports the Washington Post. "But scientists disagree on whether the the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is already slowing, and questions remain as to whether a variety of proxy measurements actually indicate a slowdown" — including a new analysis arguing that the current "has remained remarkably stable." One way to detect AMOC weakening is to monitor the strength of its components such as the Florida Current, which flows swiftly from the Gulf of Mexico into the North Atlantic. The current is a "major contributor" to the AMOC, the researchers write, and a slowdown of the current might indicate a slowdown of the AMOC. Scientists have been tracking its strength since the 1980s using a submarine cable that measures the volume of water it transports. In the current study, researchers reconsider the data, correcting for a gradual shift in Earth's magnetic field that they say affected the cable measurements. Previous assessments of the uncorrected data showed a slight slowing in the Florida Current. But when they corrected for the shift in Earth's magnetic field, the researchers write, they found that the current "has remained remarkably stable" and not declined significantly over the past 40 years. The researchers' announcement acknowledges that "It is possible that the AMOC is changing without a corresponding change in the Florida Current..."

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How were the Pyramids built? NBC News reported on "a possible answer" after new evidence was published earlier this year in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. The theory? "[A]n extinct branch of the Nile River once weaved through the landscape in a much wetter climate." Dozens of Egyptian pyramids across a 40-mile-long range rimmed the waterway, the study says, including the best-known complex in Giza. The waterway allowed workers to transport stone and other materials to build the monuments, according to the study. Raised causeways stretched out horizontally, connecting the pyramids to river ports along the Nile's bank. Drought, in combination with seismic activity that tilted the landscape, most likely caused the river to dry up over time and ultimately fill with silt, removing most traces of it. The research team based its conclusions on data from satellites that send radar waves to penetrate the Earth's surface and detect hidden features. It also relied on sediment cores and maps from 1911 to uncover and trace the imprint of the ancient waterway. Such tools are helping environmental scientists map the ancient Nile, which is now covered by desert sand and agricultural fields... The study builds on research from 2022, which used ancient evidence of pollen grains from marsh species to suggest that a waterway once cut through the present-day desert. Granite blocks weighing several tons were transported hundreds of miles, according to a professor of Egyptology at Harvard University — who tells NBC they were moved without wheels. But this new evidence that the Nile was closer to the pyramids lends further support to the evolving "canals" theory. In 2011 archaeologist Pierre Tallet found 30 different man-made caves in remote Egyptian hills, according to Smithsonian magazine. eventually locating the oldest papyrus rolls ever discovered — which were written by the builders of the Great Pyramid of Giza, describing a team of 200 workers moving limestone upriver. And in a 2017 documentary archaeologists were already reporting evidence of a waterway underneath the great Giza plateau. Slashdot reader Smonster found an alternate theory in this 2001 announcement from Caltech: Mory Gharib and his team raised a 6,900-pound, 15-foot obelisk into vertical position in the desert near Palmdale by using nothing more than a kite, a pulley system, and a support frame... One might ask whether there was and is sufficient wind in Egypt for a kite or a drag chute to fly. The answer is that steady winds of up to 30 miles-per-hour are not unusual in the areas where the pyramids and obelisks are found. "We're not Egyptologists," Gharib added. "We're mainly interested in determining whether there is a possibility that the Egyptians were aware of wind power, and whether they used it to make their lives better."

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Ars Technica reports NASA officials operating the International Space Station "are seriously concerned about a small Russian part of the station" — because it's leaking. The "PrK" tunnel connecting a larger module to a docking port "has been leaking since September 2019... In February of this year NASA identified an increase in the leak rate from less than 1 pound of atmosphere a day to 2.4 pounds a day, and in April this rate increased to 3.7 pounds a day." A new report, published Thursday by NASA's inspector general, provides details not previously released by the space agency that underline the severity of the problem... Despite years of investigation, neither Russian nor US officials have identified the underlying cause of the leak. "Although the root cause of the leak remains unknown, both agencies have narrowed their focus to internal and external welds," the report, signed by Deputy Inspector General George A. Scott, states. The plan to mitigate the risk is to keep the hatch on the Zvezda module leading to the PrK tunnel closed. Eventually, if the leak worsens further, this hatch might need to be closed permanently, reducing the number of Russian docking ports on the space station from four to three. Publicly, NASA has sought to minimize concerns about the cracking issue because it remains, to date, confined to the PrK tunnel and has not spread to other parts of the station. Nevertheless, Ars reported in June that the cracking issue has reached the highest level of concern on the space agency's 5x5 "risk matrix" to classify the likelihood and consequence of risks to spaceflight activities. The Russian leaks are now classified as a "5" both in terms of high likelihood and high consequence. "According to NASA, Roscosmos is confident they will be able to monitor and close the hatch to the Service Module prior to the leak rate reaching an untenable level. However, NASA and Roscosmos have not reached an agreement on the point at which the leak rate is untenable." The article adds that the Space Station should reach its end of life by either 2028 or 2030, and NASA "intends to transition its activities in low-Earth orbit onto private space stations," and has funded Axiom Space, Blue Origin, and Voyager Space for initial development. "There is general uncertainty as to whether any of the private space station operators will be ready in 2030."

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The world's oldest and largest cancer research association "found excessive levels of alcohol consumption increase the risk for six different types of cancer," reports CBS News: "Some of this is happening through chronic inflammation. We also know that alcohol changes the microbiome, so those are the bacteria that live in your gut, and that can also increase the risk," Dr. Céline Gounder, CBS News medical contributor and editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News, recently said on "CBS Mornings." But how much is too much when it comes to drinking? We asked experts what to know. "Excessive levels of alcohol" equates to about three or more drinks per day for women and four or more drinks per day for men, Gounder said... Other studies have shown, however, there is no "safe amount" of alcohol, Gounder said, particularly if you have underlying medical conditions. "If you don't drink, don't start drinking. If you do drink, really try to keep it within moderation," she said. Dr. Amy Commander, medical director of the Mass General Cancer Center specializing in breast cancer, told CBS News alcohol is the third leading modifiable risk factor that can increase cancer risk after accounting for cigarette smoking and excess body weight. [Other factors include physical inactivity — and diet]. "There really isn't a safe amount of alcohol for consumption," she said. "In fact, it's best to not drink alcohol at all, but that is obviously hard for many people. So I think it's really important for individuals to just be mindful of their alcohol consumption and certainly drink less." The article also includes an interesting statistic from the association's latest Cancer Progress Report: from 1991 to 2021 there's been a 33% reduction in overall cancer deaths in the U.S. That's 4.1 million lives saved — roughly 136,667 lives saved each year. "So that is hopeful," Commander said, adding that when it comes to preventing cancer, alcohol is just "one piece of the puzzle."

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Slashdot reader Hmmmmmm shared this report from NBC News: Octopuses don't always hunt alone — but their partners aren't who you'd expect. A new study shows that some members of the species Octopus cyanea maraud around the seafloor in hunting groups with fish, which sometimes include several fish species at once. The research, published in the journal Nature on Monday, even suggests that the famously intelligent animals organized the hunting groups' decisions, including what they should prey upon. What's more, the researchers witnessed the cephalopod species — often called the big blue or day octopus — punching companion fish, apparently to keep them on task and contributing to the collective effort... "If the group is very still and everyone is around the octopus, it starts punching, but if the group is moving along the habitat, this means that they're looking for prey, so the octopus is happy. It doesn't punch anyone..." [said Eduardo Sampaio, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the lead author of the research]. NBC News says the study is "an indication that at least one octopus species has characteristics and markers of intelligence that scientists once considered common only in vertebrates." Lead author Sampaio agrees that "We are very similar to these animals. In terms of sentience, they are at a very close level or closer than we think toward us."

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Researchers propose a "deceptively simple" way to sequester carbon, reports the Washington Post: burying wood underground: Forests are Earth's lungs, sucking up six times more carbon dioxide (CO2) than the amount people pump into the atmosphere every year by burning coal and other fossil fuels. But much of that carbon quickly makes its way back into the air once insects, fungi and bacteria chew through leaves and other plant material. Even wood, the hardiest part of a tree, will succumb within a few decades to these decomposers. What if that decay could be delayed? Under the right conditions, tons of wood could be buried underground in wood vaults, locking in a portion of human-generated CO2 for potentially thousands of years. While other carbon-capture technologies rely on expensive and energy-intensive machines to extract CO2, the tools for putting wood underground are simple: a tractor and a backhoe. Finding the right conditions to impede decomposition over millennia is the tough part. To test the idea, [Ning Zeng, a University of Maryland climate scientist] worked with colleagues in Quebec to entomb wood under clay soil on a crop field about 30 miles east of Montreal... But when the scientists went digging in 2013, they uncovered something unexpected: A piece of wood already buried about 6½ feet underground. The craggy, waterlogged piece of eastern red cedar appeared remarkably well preserved. "I remember standing there looking at other people, thinking, 'Do we really need to continue this experiment?'" Zeng recalled. "Because here's the evidence...." Radiocarbon dating revealed the log to be 3,775 years old, give or take a few decades. Comparing the old chunk of wood to a freshly cut piece of cedar showed the ancient log lost less than 5 percent of its carbon over the millennia. The log was surrounded by stagnant, oxygen-deprived groundwater and covered by an impermeable layer of clay, preventing fungi and insects from consuming the wood. Lignin, a tough material that gives trees their strength, protected the wood's carbohydrates from subterranean bacteria... The researchers estimate buried wood can sequester up 10 billion tons of CO2 per year, which is more than a quarter of annual global emissions from energy, according to the International Energy Agency.

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When it comes to professional certifications, the long-running nonprofit Linux Professional Institute boasts they've issued 250,000, making them the world's largest Linux/Open Source certification body. And last week they announced a "strategic alliance" with the Open Source Initiative (OSI), which will now be "participating in development and maintenance of these programs." The announcement points out that the Open Source Initiative already has many distinct responsibilities. Besides creating the Open Source Definition — and certifying that Open Source licenses meet the requirements of Open Source software — the OSI's mission is to "encourage the growth of Open Source communities around the world," which includes "educational and outreach efforts to spread Open Source principles." So the ultimate goal is "strengthening Linux and Open Source communities," according to the announcement, by "nurturing the growth of more highly skilled professionals," with the OSI encouraging more people to get certifications for employers. The Open Source movement "has never been in greater need of educated professionals," says OSI executive director Stefano Maffulli, "to drive the next leap forward in Open Source understanding, innovation, and adoption... "This partnership with LPI is one in a series of initiatives that will increase accessibility to the certifications and community participation that Open Source needs to thrive." And the LPI's executive director says it's their group's mission "to promote the use of open source by supporting the people who work with it. A closer relationship with OSI makes a valuable contribution to this effort." The move "reaffirms the commitment of LPI and OSI to enhance the adoption of Linux and Open Source technology," according to the announcement.

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